6 May - The Rivers of China by Alma de Groen

Alma de Groen, the author of The Rivers of China, is an Australian playwright, born in New Zealand. 

In The Rivers of China two plots interweave: the Fontainebleau narrative and the Sydney narrative, both involved with the life and death of the New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield, and both concerned with the place of women and artists in a patriarchal society. In 1923 the writer Katherine Mansfield went to the guru Gurdjieff in Fontainebleau that he might "cure her soul." In the 1980s (or 'today') in Sydney, a young man awakes in a hospital to find himself in a world dominated by women. As they struggle to discover their true identity, their separate stories intriguingly interweave. Alma De Groen makes free use of Mansfield's journals and letters and the writings of Gurdjieff.

Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp Murry (14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923) was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. At 19, Mansfield left New Zealand and settled in the United Kingdom, where she became a friend of modernist writers such as D H Lawrence and Viriginia Woolf. Her life-style was 'bohemian'.  She had lovers of both genders and whilst romantically engaged with  Arnold Trowell took his brother, Garnet, as her lover.  Pregnant by Garnet, Mansfield quickly married George Bowden, but left  him the same evening before the marriage could be consummated and returned briefly to Garnet, but lost the baby after her mother dispatched her to Bavaria.  Shortly after her mother cut her out of her will.

She then began on a tempestuous relationship, and marriage, with the magazine editor John Middleton Murry. 

Mansfield was greatly affected by the loss of her brother in France during WW1.

Mansfield spent her last years seeking increasingly unorthodox cures for her tuberculosis. The play The Rivers of China is a based on the time she spent Georges Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in Fontainebleau, France.  She died of TB aged only 34 in 1923.

George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (January 13, 1866–1877? - October 29, 1949), was an influential spiritual teacher of the early to mid-20th century who taught that most humans live their lives in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep", but that it is possible to transcend to a higher state of consciousness and achieve full human potential.  At different times in his life, Gurdjieff formed and closed various schools around the world to teach The Work. He claimed that the teachings he brought to the West from his own experiences and early travels expressed the truth found in ancient religions and wisdom teachings relating to self-awareness in people's daily lives and humanity's place in the universe.

Gurdjieff was born in culturally diverse Kars, a former outpost of the Ottoman Empire, and grew up speaking Armenian, Pontic Greek, Russian and Turkish before acquiring various European languages.  He traveled widely, funding himself through various 'business' enterprises along the way. As well as seeking 'the Truth', Gurdjieff was a writer, choreographer, composer and lecturer who gave assistance to members of his extended family fleeing from Russia.

The establishment at Fontainbleu was spartan and Gurdjieff put into practice his teaching that man needs to develop physically, emotionally and intellectually, hence the mixture of lectures, music, dance, and manual work and Gurdjieff was often harsh on his pupils.  He acquired notoriety as "the man who killed Katherine Mansfield" after she died under his care. However, another school of thought is that Mansfield knew she would soon die and that Gurdjieff made her last days happy and fulfilling.  

During the play the author directs some of Gurdjieff's music to be used.  You can find it here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt0CXEPpYmY

 

The Rivers of China also makes reference to various other works, most notably the three poems below:

The Soul has Bandaged moments - Emily Dickinson

The Soul has Bandaged moments -

When too appalled to stir -

She feels some ghastly Fright come up

And stop to look at her -

Salute her, with long fingers -

Caress her freezing hair -

Sip, Goblin, from the very lips

The Lover - hovered - o'er -

Unworthy, that a thought so mean

Accost a Theme - so - fair -

The soul has moments of escape -

When bursting all the doors -

She dances like a Bomb, abroad,

And swings opon the Hours,

As do the Bee - delirious borne -

Long Dungeoned from his Rose -

Touch Liberty - then know no more -

But Noon, and Paradise

The Soul's retaken moments -

When, Felon led along,

With shackles on the plumed feet,

And staples, in the song,

The Horror welcomes her, again,

These, are not brayed of Tongue –

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer - Keats

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,

   And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

   Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

   That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;

   Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

   When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

   He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men

Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—

   Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Rarely, rarely, comest thou - Shelley

Rarely, rarely, comest thou,

         Spirit of Delight!

Wherefore hast thou left me now

         Many a day and night?

Many a weary night and day

'Tis since thou are fled away.

How shall ever one like me

         Win thee back again?

With the joyous and the free

         Thou wilt scoff at pain.

Spirit false! thou hast forgot

All but those who need thee not.

As a lizard with the shade

         Of a trembling leaf,

Thou with sorrow art dismay'd;

         Even the sighs of grief

Reproach thee, that thou art not near,

And reproach thou wilt not hear.

Let me set my mournful ditty

         To a merry measure;

Thou wilt never come for pity,

         Thou wilt come for pleasure;

Pity then will cut away

Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.

I love all that thou lovest,

         Spirit of Delight!

The fresh Earth in new leaves dress'd,

         And the starry night;

Autumn evening, and the morn

When the golden mists are born.

I love snow, and all the forms

         Of the radiant frost;

I love waves, and winds, and storms,

         Everything almost

Which is Nature's, and may be

Untainted by man's misery.

I love tranquil solitude,

         And such society

As is quiet, wise, and good;

         Between thee and me

What difference? but thou dost possess

The things I seek, not love them less.

I love Love—though he has wings,

         And like light can flee,

But above all other things,

         Spirit, I love thee—

Thou art love and life! Oh come,

Make once more my heart thy home.

15 April - The Real Inspector Hound by Tom Stoppard and Sotoba Komachi: a Noh Play

In March we enjoyed the highly entertaining Sleuth, which had definite parallels with Deathtrap which we had read last year.  It is basically a two-man play, and we enjoyed the surprises when additional characters were revealed to be one of other of the protagonists.

In April we will be reading an entirely different sort of murder mystery.  One by Tom Stoppard (Sir Thomas Stoppard that is).  This Czech-born Brit is a prolific writer, whose works are usually quite mentally challenging!

Sir Tom Stoppard

  

The Real Inspector Hound

The Real Inspector Hound, a short, one-act play, is definitely one of Stoppard's more accessible works.  The plot follows two theatre critics  who are watching a ludicrous setup of a country house whodunnit and, by chance, they become involved in the action causing a series of events that parallel the play they are watching.  The play was written between 1961 and 1962, and is a parody of the stereotypical mysteries such as those written by Agatha Christie.  Indeed, the title is a direct reference to the ending of The Mousetrap.  Interestingly Wikipedia tells us that the producers of Agatha Christie's play could not publicly object to Stoppard's title without drawing even more attention to the closely-guarded ending of The Mousetrap.

The Real Inspector Hound examines the ideas of fate and free will, as well as exploring the themes of the play within a play.  It is an example of absurdism, farce, parody and satire!

Noh Plays

I have to confess that I have had to resort once again to Wikipedia for a summary of what a Noh play is!

Noh, or Nogaku, is derived from the Sino-Japanese word for "skill" or "talent" and is a major form of classical Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Developed by Kan'ami (1333 – June 8, 1384, a Noh actor, author, and musician) and his son Zeami, it is the oldest major theatre art still regularly performed today. Traditionally, a Noh program includes five Noh plays with comedic Kyōgen  plays in between, although an abbreviated program of two Noh plays and one kyōgen piece has become common in Noh presentations today. An okina (a particular sort of Noh) play may be presented in the very beginning especially during New Years, holidays, and other special occasions.

Noh is often based on tales from traditional literature with a supernatural being transformed into human form as a hero narrating a story. Noh integrates masks, costumes and various props in a dance-based performance, requiring highly trained actors and musicians. Having a strong emphasis on tradition rather than innovation, Noh is extremely codified and regulated.

Emotions are primarily conveyed by stylized conventional gestures while the iconic masks represent the roles such as ghosts, women, children, and old people. Written in ancient Japanese language, the text "vividly describes the ordinary people of the twelfth to sixteenth centuries".

Some Noh masks:

Sotoba Komachi by Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima (January 14, 1925 – November 25, 1970), was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, and film director. Mishima is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century; he was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.  He was expected to win the prize in 1968 but lost the award to a fellow countryman and it was presumed that this was because of his radical right-wing activities. His avant-garde work displayed a blending of modern and traditional aesthetics that broke cultural boundaries, with a focus on sexuality, death, and political change.

He is remembered for his ritual suicide by beheading following a failed coup d'etat attempt, known as the "Mishima Incident". Mishima and four other members of his Tatenokai (private defence force formed by Mishima) barricaded themselves and in the office of a defence commandant, and tied the commandant to his chair. With a prepared manifesto and a banner listing their demands, Mishima stepped onto the balcony to address the soldiers gathered below. His speech was intended to inspire a revolt to restore the power of the emperor. He succeeded only in irritating the soldiers, and was mocked and jeered. He finished his planned speech after a few minutes, returned to the commandant's office and committed suicide (with the aid of one of his colleagues) following  a traditional suicide ritual, which included the composition of so-called death poems.  Mishima planned his suicide meticulously for at least a year and no one outside the group of hand-picked Tatenokai members had any indication of what he was planning. His biographer suggests that the coup attempt was only a pretext for the ritual suicide of which Mishima had long dreamed. Mishima made sure his affairs were in order and left money for the legal defense of the three surviving Tatenokai members.


Mishima was also known for his bodybuilding and modelling.  Despite having a wife and children, after his death Mishima's sexuality was also questioned and a male lover published letters that he had received from him.

Sotoba Komachi 


The original work was a conversation between two priests and a 99-year-old lady at a Buddhist shrine. She later admits that she is Ono no Komachi (one of the six great waka poets in Heian period). She is then possessed by Captain Fukakusa (one of Komachi’s suitors) angry spirit and confesses him visiting Komachi for 99 nights in order to earn her love but lacking one and dying in agony. Mishima reworked the story and borrowed the characters (the old lady and Captain Fukakusa) from Kanami’s Sotoba Komachi.

Mishima reset the story in a 1950s urban park. At the beginning of the story, five couples were sitting on the benches and embracing. A 99-year-old lady appeared in the scene and was questioned by a drunk poet, who was sitting alone observing her actions. They started a conversation and the old lady later confessed that she was once a beautiful woman when she was young and was admired by Captain Fukakusa. Suddenly the poet found themselves in the Rokumei Hall, a ballroom where many splendid-looking ladies and gentlemen were dancing. Everyone in the ball room were amazed by the beauty of the old lady (whom they recognized as the beautiful Komachi). The poet was surprised that the old, ugly and wrinkled woman became this beautiful young lady and felt in love with her. Not knowing the fact that all men who complimented Komachi’s beauty would die, he was not able to stop his affection towards her and spoke the taboo words. His last words before he died were ““I will meet you again, I am sure, in a hundred years, at the same place.”

4 March - Sleuth by Anthony Shaffer

We had a record-breaking turn out last week, with 14 of us gathering to read Blithe Spirit.  We were delighted to welcome two new members: Ryoko and Charlotte, and hope that they enjoyed their afternoon.

Our next play will be Sleuth, a 1970 play written by Anthony Shaffer.

This choice follows on from our readings of Deathtrap and Then There Were None last year, and we will round up our current look at murder mysteries by reading Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound in April.

Sleuth is set in the manor house of Andrew Wyke, an immensely successful mystery writer. Wyke's home reflects his obsession with the inventions and deceptions of fiction and his fascination with games and game-playing. He lures his wife's lover, Milo Tindle, to the house and convinces him to stage a robbery of her jewellery, a proposal that sets off a chain of events that leaves the audience trying to decipher where Wyke's imagination ends and reality begins.  It will be particularly interesting to compare this play with Deathtrap.
 
According to Wikipedia, Shaffer said the play was partially inspired by one of his friends, composer Stephen Sondheim, whose intense interest in game-playing is mirrored by the character of Wyke.

The play has been adapted into film.  In 1972 starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine, in 2007 by Kenneth Branagh starring err.... Michael Caine and Jude Law (with Caine changing role) and as the Urdu film Tamanna in 2014.

And now ... Spot The Difference!

4 February - Blithe Spirit

We all really enjoyed Amadeus, and I was fascinated at how much funnier it was when read out loud than simply read!  It must be a wonderful film, and one I intend to watch sometime in the near future.  I was also delighted that a group of us will now be going to see The Merry Widow: I am sorry I cannot join you, and hope that there will be another opportunity soon to discover opera.

For next month I was hit by inspiration whilst listening to the radio, and I seem to recall someone asking for another Noël Coward soon!

Therefore, in February we will be reading ...

Blithe Spirit

The play concerns the socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium Madame Arcati, to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to gather material for his next book. The scheme backfires when he is haunted by the ghost of his annoying and temperamental first wife, Elvira, after the séance. Elvira makes continual attempts to disrupt Charles's marriage to his second wife, Ruth, who cannot see or hear the ghost.

The play was first seen in London in 1941, creating a new long-run record for non-musical British plays of 1,997 performances. It also did well on Broadway later that year, running for 657 performances. Coward adapted the play for film in 1945, starring Rex Harrison, and directed a musical adaptation on Broadway in 1964. It was also adapted for television and radio and has subsequently been regularly revived on the stage. 

The title of the play is taken from Shelley's  poem To a Skylark, ("Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! / Bird thou never wert"). For some time before 1941 Coward had been thinking of a comedy about ghosts. His first thoughts centred on an old house in Paris, haunted by spectres from different centuries, with the comedy arising from their conflicting attitudes, but he could not get the plot to work in his mind. He knew that in wartime Britain, with death a constant presence, there would be some objection to a comedy about ghosts, but his firm view was that as the story would be thoroughly heartless, "you can't sympathise with any of them. If there was a heart it would be a sad story."

Margaret Rutherford (Madame Arcati),  Kay Hammond (Elvira) and Fay Compton (Ruth)

 

7 January - Amadeus

First of all my huge thanks to you all for your very very generous gift voucher - I am looking forward very much to my meal at the Brasserie des Etangs Mellaerts (and Tim is delighted that it's on a tram route - rather presumptious of him to think I'll take him along as well!!!)

I really do get a great deal of pleasure from the group, so I think that next year we need to have a serious conversation about the fact that if there's to be a gift then I should contribute too! 

And as I say repeatedly - I really do think Rina has the hardest job of all!

But on to January - and we'll be reading Amadeus by Peter Shaffer.

You will need to bring your imagination with you as this highly acclaimed, and highly fictionalised, play about the lives of Mozart and Antoino Salieri relies heavily on staging effects and music when performed professionally. Unless one of you would be happy to provide the music??

The origins of the play are from a supposed rivalry between Salieri and Mozart.  In the 1780s while Mozart lived and worked in Vienna, he and his father Leopold wrote in their letters that several "cabals" of Italians led by Salieri were actively putting obstacles in the way of Mozart's obtaining certain posts or staging his operas.  For example, Mozart wrote to his father in May 1783 about Salieri and Lorenzo Da Ponte, the court poet: "You know those Italian gentlemen; they are very nice to your face! Enough, we all know about them. And if [Da Ponte] is in league with Salieri, I'll never get a text from him, and I would love to show here what I can really do with an Italian opera." Decades after Mozart's death, a rumour began to circulate that Mozart had been poisoned by Salieri. These rumors then made their way into popular culture. The biographer Alexander Wheelock Thayer  believes that Mozart's rivalry with Salieri could have originated with an incident in 1781 when Mozart applied to be the music teacher of Princess Elisabeth of Wuttemberg,   and Salieri was selected instead because of his reputation as a singing teacher. In the following year Mozart once again failed to be selected as the Princess's piano teacher.  However, even with Mozart and Salieri being rivals for certain jobs, there is very little evidence that the relationship between the two composers was at all acrimonious beyond this, especially after 1785 or so when Mozart had become established in Vienna. Rather, they appeared to usually see each other as friends and colleagues and supported each other's work. For example, when Salieri was appointed Kapellmeister in 1788 he revived Figaro instead of bringing out a new opera of his own; and when he went to the coronation festivities for Leopold II in 1790 he had no fewer than three Mozart masses in his luggage. Salieri and Mozart even composed a cantata for voice and piano together, called Per la ricuperata salute di Ophelia.

Amadeus was first performed in 1979, and in 1981 won the Tony Award for Best Play and subsequently became a 1984 Academy Award winning film: the cast included Simon Callow in the role of  Emanuel Schikaneder, although he had played the title role on the London stage.

There are a number of historical characters, and many of them are new to me - so my apologies to those of you with a better working knowledge of musical history if I spell out who some of these people are!

These notes are lifted from Wikipedia - where  you will find out far more about these people if you wish to!

Vienna, 1758.
Painting by Giovanni Canaletto

Antonio Salieri

 

(18 August 1750 – 7 May 1825) An Italian classical composer, conductor and teacher who spent his adult life and career as a subject of the Habsburg Monarchy. He was a pivotal figure in the development of late 18th-century opera and a cosmopolitan composer who wrote operas in three languages. Salieri helped to develop and shape many of the features of operatic compositional vocabulary and his music was a powerful influence on contemporary composers. Appointed the director of the Italian opera by the Habsburg court, a post he held from 1774 to 1792, Salieri dominated Italian language opera in Vienna. During his career he also spent time writing works for opera houses in Venice, Rome, and Paris. 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

(7 January 1756 – 5 December 1791).  Baptised as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. At 17, he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg but grew restless and travelled in search of a better position, always composing abundantly. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and portions of the Requiem which was largely unfinished at the time of his death, having composed over 600 workds of symphonic, concert, chamber, operatic and choral music.  He was survived by his wife Constanze and two sons.

Constanze Weber
 

(5 January 1762 – 6 March 1842)  Constanze Weber was born into a musical family.  Her father Fridolin Weber worked as a double bass player, prompter and music copyist.  Constanze had three sisters: all were trained as singers, and Josepha and Aloysia both went on to distinguished musical careers, performing later on in the premieres of a number of Mozart's works. During most of Constanze's upbringing, the family lived in her mother's hometown of Mannheim, an important musical center of the time. The 21-year-old Mozart visited Mannheim in 1777 on a job-hunting tour and developed a close relationship with the Weber family. He fell in love, not with the 15-year-old Constanze, but with Aloysia. While Mozart was in Paris, Aloysia obtained a position as a singer in Munich, and the family accompanied her there. She rejected Mozart when he passed through Munich on his way back to Salzburg. By the time Mozart moved to Vienna in 1781, Aloysia had married and her husband, Joseph Lange, agreed to help Cäcilia Weber with an annual stipend, and she took in boarders to make ends meet. 

On first arriving in Vienna on 16 March 1781, Mozart stayed at the house of the Teutonic Order with the staff of his patron, Archbishop Colloredo.  In May, he "was obliged to leave," and chose to board in the Weber household, originally intending "to stay there only a week."  After a while, it became apparent to Cäcilia Weber that Mozart was courting Constanze, now 19, and in the interest of propriety, she requested that he leave. The courtship continued, not entirely smoothly. Surviving correspondence indicates that Mozart and Constanze briefly broke up in April 1782, over an episode involving jealousy (Constanze had permitted another young man to measure her calves in a parlor game). Mozart also faced a very difficult task getting his father's permission for the marriage.  The marriage finally took place in an atmosphere of crisis, and it has been suggested that eventually Constanze moved in with Mozart, which would have placed her in disgrace by the mores of the time.  Mozart wrote to Leopold on 31 July 1782, "All the good and well-intentioned advice you have sent fails to address the case of a man who has already gone so far with a maiden. Further postponement is out of the question.^" The biographer Heartz relates, "Constanze's sister Sophie had tearfully declared that her mother would send the police after Constanze if she did not return home (presumably from Mozart's apartment)." On 4 August, Mozart wrote to Baroness von Waldstätten, asking "Can the police here enter anyone's house in this way? Perhaps it is only a ruse of Madame Weber to get her daughter back. If not, I know no better remedy than to marry Constanze tomorrow morning or if possible today."  The marriage did indeed take place that day. In the marriage contract, Constanze "assigns to her bridegroom five hundred gulden which [...] the latter has promised to augment with one thousand gulden", with the total "to pass to the survivor". Further, all joint acquisitions during the marriage were to remain the common property of both. A day after the marriage took place, the consent of Wolfgang's father arrived in the mail. The couple had six children, of whom four did not survive infancy.

Joseph II, Emperor of Austria (13 March 1741 – 20 February 1790)

Count Johann Kilian Von Strack:  Groom of the Imperial Chamber

Count Franz Orsini-Rosenberg: Director of the Imperial Opera

Baron Gottfried van Swieten: Prefect of the Imperial Library

Two Venticelli:  "Little Winds" Purveyors of information, gossip and rumour

Major Domo

There are also a number of silent parts:

Teresa Salieri:  Wife of Salieri

Katherina Cavalieri:  Salieri's pupil

Kapellmeister Bonno  

Salieri's Valet and Cook